


Mechanics

by plathitudes



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Kind-of Rape Recovery, Self-Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 08:58:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plathitudes/pseuds/plathitudes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can never stop being an anguisette, no matter how much she had cursed Kushiel, cursed every god including Blessed Elua Himself when kneeling on the Mahrkagir’s floor. It is a part of her, as much as red-stricken eyes and Delaunay’s teachings. She can no more will it away than she can will stars out of the sky.</p>
<p>That does not mean that she cannot circumvent it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mechanics

**Author's Note:**

> There is mention of past rape in this story, though much less than there is in the actual book. Please be aware of that before you read, and don't read it if you think it will trigger something, etc.

She learns, after they come back to Terre d’Ange, how to smother that part of herself. She can never stop being an anguisette, no matter how much she had cursed Kushiel, cursed every god including Blessed Elua Himself, when kneeling on the Mahrkagir’s floor, as every cut that dripped blood burned with a slow, nauseating pleasure. It is a part of her, as much as red-stricken eyes and Delaunay’s teachings. She can no more will it away than she can will stars out of the sky.

That does not mean that she cannot circumvent it. She has, Phedre tells herself, self-control, and she has Joscelin, and Imriel, and the Name of God hidden underneath her tongue. She immerses herself in them, one by one, and stifles the voice in her head crying out for pain and bruised knees. She is more than the sum of her desires.

Joscelin is, in this as in all things, her Perfect Companion. When she goes to him at night he opens his arms to her and treats her like she’s precious, speaking seldom, his eyes on her as though in worship. She shuts her gaze and loses herself in him, the scent of his sweat, the smooth of his skin, raised and knotted where his many scars lie. She had thought, when she was younger, that she could not exist without the relief of the whip; she knows now that, without Joscelin, breathing itself feels difficult. Her life is a pale shadow without him; how many times over would she be dead without his faith to carry her through, to carry her out? Her love is wholly Cassiel’s servant, with his brusqueness and perfect faith, shaken so many times and yet firmer for it, who stood at the crossroads and chose her, again and again. She cannot say as much for herself.

She will dedicate herself to him, as she had not before, until thoughts of pain and release are as far from her mind as the rains of Jebe-Barkal. She decides this in the middle of the night, propped up on one arm and looking at Joscelin’s moonlit back as he sleeps. She traces his scars with one finger and tries not to wonder if they ache sometimes, how deeply they’d burned when they were etched into his skin. She tries not to taste envy in her throat.

Imriel is, in this as in all things, painfully earnest and fierce in his single-minded love for her. It is the most frightening thing she has ever known, the depth of his devotion, for she has never known a child’s love before. She wonders if she may have felt this for her parents, had they kept her, but does not think so. It is Phedre’s belief that the sheer capacity of his young, painful heart is something that Imriel alone possesses. No one else could possibly stand what he has withstood, and still retain the ability to love. At age ten, she had been running away with Hyacinthe and yearning for unknown, unnamed things beyond the understanding of her innocent mind. At age ten, Imriel had endured horrors that make her wish to murder the Mahrkagir all over again, and escaped with his mind intact.

She does not think that she can live up to his expectations of her, and she knows that the day is steadily getting closer when Imriel will realize the Shahrizai side of his heritage, and everything will change.

But until then, and past then, and forever, she will love him with as much depth as he loves her, and she will try to be worthy of it. She pledges this to herself as she watches him wrestle with Joscelin in the fields of Montreve, and pushes away thoughts of how, once more, her nature will inevitably separate her from one she loves.

And the Name of God is, in this as in all things, frightening and awful and awesome. As she was once able to lose herself in the webs and patterns of politics and human behavior, so can she now lose herself in the perfection of a bird’s wing in flight, the bleeding-heart colours of the sunset, the intricacy of frost spreading its cold lace on morning grass. It frightens Imriel, she knows. It frightens her, sometimes, but at other times she thinks it’s a gift. She is aware of the world in a way that she never was before, a way that she does not notice in anyone else. Joscelin has a little bit of it, but to him the complexity of the sky and land and sea are obstacles, to be noted and navigated around. People are catalogued, evaluated, and most often dismissed as no threat. It is no longer as easy for her to distance herself from the world; even in the middle of speech, she can sometimes find her thoughts drifting to the miracle of language, and syntax and grammar and poetry of it.

And if Joscelin’s resignation to living with her eternally-difficult nature grows more tangible every time he has to shake her out of her daze, if Imriel’s frustration and fear grows every time she stops speaking in the middle of her sentence...if the memories of Melisande and the beautiful burning she inflicted intrude as often as contemplations of grass...she does not know what to do.

She becomes prone to snapping - not at Imriel, never at Imriel, but at Joscelin, Ti-Philippe, Hugues, other members of her household. She holds her temper with firm hands when with Ysandre, always aware of the deep-buried edge of tension between them, that may never quite fade away. But when Favrielle makes a cutting comment about high and mighty contesses who can’t make appointments like ordinary people, she ends up scathingly mocking ungrateful ateliers too ugly to be of the Night Court. Favrielle inhales once, and remains silent through the rest of the fitting, as her assistants blink at each other and Phedre digs her nails into her palms.

She apologizes before she leaves, and tries not to make it perfunctory. Favrielle gives her a stare all the more painful for the hurt in it, and shuts her door in Phedre’s face. She supposes she deserves it, and rides back to the house in silence. Joscelin, who had been present through the exchange, says absolutely nothing about it, but his silent confusion is suddenly more than she can bear.

She goes out in that night, cloaked and hooded and leaving only a brief note for Joscelin. She goes to Kushiel’s temple, whose gates are always open, and submits to the brief ablution, then kneels before the post, feeling the coarse rope chafe her wrists and relaxing into some deep part of herself, a part that is hers alone, and does not include Joscelin or Imriel or the Name of God.

The sting of the lash, when it comes, strips everything away in a haze of bronze. Memories of the Mahrkagir wither and burn in Kushiel’s cleansing fire, and she weeps shamelessly, ugly and raw. She does not find pleasure in it akin to that which she has known, and she understands that she is not here for pleasure. Her release, when it comes, is a wave of agonized ecstasy that leaves her exhausted and cold when it passes.

The acolyte helps her up when she cannot stand, and she pulls up her dress. She does not speak to the priest, and he does not speak to her, but she kneels to him, deeply, and then leaves the temple. She walks her horse slowly through the City of Elua, the night wind chilly and fresh on her skin. Every exhale is more peaceful than the last.

When she arrives at the townhouse, Joscelin is waiting for her. She extends her bruised hands to him, and he helps her home.

**Author's Note:**

> Ack Phedre is difficult for me to write. Anyways, I don't think that there was any real discussion of how Phedre's experiences in Darsagna impacted her view of herself or her being an anguisette or anything, and if there was... well, then, I'm expanding. So there.
> 
> Also, if you're wondering what the hell the title is... I don't know. I needed something. Eugh.


End file.
